Tuesday, October 18, 2011

In 1971 a counter-insurgency manual set out an operational response to non-violent direct action protest movements as well as military insurgencies like the Provision IRA in Northern Ireland, drawing on the UK’s colonial experience. Today, it holds a surprise for a new reader.

General Frank Kitson’s 1971 counter-insurgency manual Low Intensity Operations [12] has long been of interest to students of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Within months of its publication, its author was commanding 39 Brigade in Belfast where he pioneered the use of the Parachute Regiment [13] as shock troops, and of plain-clothes ‘counter-gangs’ [14] to combat paramilitary groups.

However, what struck me most when I obtained a copy recently was not the book’s obvious significance for such controversial episodes, but its striking relevance to events in Britain in recent weeks.

That’s because Kitson gives considerable attention to the question of how a government can combat a campaign of non-violent direct action. He devotes a whole chapter to the subject, despite showing considerable scepticism about the value of direct action as a tactic:

“It is rare to find large numbers of people who are so interested in a political cause that they are prepared to abandon their work and sacrifice their recreational time merely to stand around in a group being troublesome to the government on the off chance that it will make concessions in some direction which will probably bring them little personal benefit or satisfaction. In fact only the hard core organizers are likely to be sufficiently dedicated to behave in this way, and such people are normally viewed with suspicion by the normal working man or housewife and even by the majority of the student population.”

Kitson argued that to overcome this problem, the hard core organizers need to mobilise an intermediate group of ‘politically conscious idealists’ in sufficient numbers to goad the authorities into discrediting themselves by some violent action.

Kitson wrote primarily on the basis of his experiences in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus, dealing with highly centralised communist or nationalist movements, in situations where direct action was ultimately replaced by outright insurgency.

He did recognise that the students involved in the then recent events of May 1968 in France were resistant to centralised control, but he regarded this as illustrating a general weakness of direct action, its dependence on mobilising large numbers of ordinary people.

For Kitson, the workers and students of 1968 had been bought off with concessions on wages and universities, frustrating the larger socialist ambitions of the organisers. His practical recommendations are a generalisation of this model:

“In practical terms the most promising line of approach lies in separating the mass of those engaged in the campaign from the leadership by the judicious promise of concessions, at the same time imposing a period of calm by the use of government forces backed up by statements to the effect that most of the concessions can only be implemented once the life of the country returns to normal. Although with an eye to world opinion, and to the need to retain the allegiance of the people, no more force than is necessary for containing the situation should be used, conditions can be made reasonably uncomfortable for the population as a whole, in order to provide an incentive for a return to normal life and to act as a deterrent towards a resumption of the campaign.

Having once succeeded in providing a breathing space by these means, it is most important to do three further things quickly. The first is to implement the promised concessions quickly so as to avoid allegations of bad faith which may enable the subversive element to regain control over certain sections of the people. The second is to discover and neutralise the subversive element. The third is to associate as many prominent members of the population, especially those who have been engaged in non-violent action, with the government. This last technique is known in America as co-optation..”

(U//FOUO) FBI Anonymous’ Participation in “Day of Rage” Protest May Coincide with Cyber Attack(U//FOUO) The FBI assesses that the hacktivist group Anonymous is likely to participate in the “Day of Rage” protest scheduled for 17 September 2011 in New York City‟s financial district. While the extent of group members‟ participation in the event is unknown, in late August 2011 Anonymous endorsed the event through propaganda consisting of a video posted on YouTube and a campaign poster, as well as references in their Twitter accounts.

Greece braced for all-out strikeGreek ships were harboured and trains halted today as angry workers built momentum for "the mother of all strikes" expected to bring the entire country to a halt in protest against a new package of tax hikes and wage cuts.

Animal Rights: The Brown Dog Riots of 1907It can be surprising to discover that the largest, most controversial and violent riot in Britain concerning the emotive issue of animal rights occurred not in recent years, but in 1907 – and that the most vociferous and heated protagonists were not those demonstrating on behalf of animals, but medical students defending their cruel, barbaric and unregulated scientific experiments. The so-called Brown Dog Affair – which saw its worst night of rioting in Trafalgar Square, as some 1,000 rowdy medical students clashed with police, suffragettes, trade unionists and working-class animal lovers – raged for seven years and was one of the most divisive issues in Edwardian London.

LEADERSHIP & OPEN SOURCE PROTEST #owsFluid, constrained leadership is an important part of open source protest. Fluid in that there are no fixed positions. Contrained in that it is limited to managing a single function. There isn't any overarching leadership.

Occupy World St.: From NYC to EverywhereAll over the globe people are rising up and demanding their rights in a worldwide rally of discontent as protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement spread around the world on Saturday.

OCCUPY WALL STREET (the theory)Occupy Wall Street is an open source protest.This type of protest has been very effective over the last year in toppling regimes in north Africa. It's proving relatively successful in the US too.

The Tribal Organizational Model & Open Source Tribal InsurgencyJohn Robb at Global Guerrillas has written a couple of pieces on “manufactured” tribes. That is, using a tribal organizational structure to advance a group’s goals and protect its members. He writes:How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem.

The DSS is extremely resilient and extremely effective and 20 boomboxes can easily transmit music or voice to a crowd of 500. It is infinitely scaleable, and can also be rigged to broadcast silently to portable radios with headphones when noise regulations are an issue. All the equipment required is portable, cheap and readily available.

This short video displays the activity on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare) during the riots of October 15th which took place in Rome during the local instance of the 15th October initiative created in the planetary process started by the Occupy Wall Street movement.The peaks and contours you see represent the intensity of the communication and conversations that was taking place from the start of the protest (at 3pm local time) up until its approximate end (at 8pm local time).The animation shows the geo-referenced intensity of messages for each 30 minute time slot from the beginning to the end of the protest.

World News on Bush Visit to Canada: Arrest the War CriminalOn March 17th 2009, Cynthia McKinney’s birthday, we broke the police line defending the puppet of Wall Street G.W. Bush in Calgary Alberta and attempted to serve him the papers drawn up by Gail Davidson and Lawyers Against War (LAW).This mass torturer/murderer is coming to Surrey, BC this October 20th 2011, lets give him and Bill Clinton a huge welcome. (P.S. Bring an extra pair of handcuffs for Mayor Watts for collaborating with self confessed war criminals.)

Investigative reporters and websites again threatened by proposed “gag law”Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the resumption of parliamentary discussion of a government bill that would curb the publication of police wiretaps in the news media and would force websites to publish corrections automatically. Approved by the senate in June 2010, the bill had been shelved because of an outcry from civil society.

New study encourages broadcasters to work together to battle censorshipThe Canada Center for Global Security Studies, a University of Toronto organization that focuses on Internet security, as well as Citizen Lab and the Munk School of Global Affairs, have joint-released a report titled Casting a Wider Net: Lessons Learned in Delivering BBC Content on the Censored Internet.

600 Mysteries in the Night SkyNASA's Fermi team recently released the second catalog of gamma-ray sources detected by their satellite's Large Area Telescope (LAT). Of the 1873 sources found, nearly 600 are complete mysteries. No one knows what they are.

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Roots

Revelation 13

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...

...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...

Mark 13

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.